Good Practices

Table of contents

1. Always Define company_id field to support multicompany
2. Always Inherit mail.thread And mail.activity.mixin For New Model
3. Always Inherit _valid_field_parameter() If You Want Non-Mandatory Parameter On Fields
4. Always Include String Parameter When Declaring Fields
5. Always Broke Your Code Into Parts
6. Never Use store=True For Computed Fields

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Always Define company_id field to support multicompany

The title says it all. Just do it.

company_id = fields.Many2one('res.company', 'Company', default=lambda self: self.env.company)

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Always Inherit mail.thread And mail.activity.mixin For New Model

This will let you add chatter and activity into the models

class ModelClass(models.Model):
  _name = "model.example"
  _description = "Model Example Description"
  _inherit = ['mail.thread', 'mail.activity.mixin']
  _rec_name = 'name'

Afterwards, dont forget to render the XML

<div class="oe_chatter">
    <field name="message_follower_ids" widget="mail_followers"/>
    <field name="activity_ids" widget="mail_activity"/>
    <field name="message_ids" widget="mail_thread"/>
</div>

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Always Inherit _valid_field_parameter() If You Want Non-Mandatory Parameter On Fields

Since version 14.0, defining certain parameter directly into the fields is no longer supported. Thus, you need to add the parameter into it.

def _valid_field_parameter(self, field, name):
  return name == 'ondelete' or super()._valid_field_parameter(field, name)

name = fields.Char(ondelete='restrict', string='Name')

Those inheritance will extend the _valid_field_parameter() to accept ondelete parameter. You can also do the same with tracking parameter

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Always Include String Parameter When Declaring Fields

When you declare field in Odoo such as

company_partner_id = fields.Many2one('res.partner')

it is better to put string parameter as well

company_partner_id = fields.Many2one('res.partner', string='Client')

Why?

• It will enhance user experience when they wanna do import-export .xlsx
• You (as developer) will be able to declare it (fields) with different name (string) to it

Also, avoid naming field via .xml because it will make user confused. Declaring in .xml will only appear on XML level so when user exporting records to .xlsx (Excel File) they fill have a hard time.

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Always Broke Your Code Into Parts

Split your code into different method. This will ensure the code is reusable.

• Using single parameter like self is fine.
• Use return so you can assign the result into other object.

Example

def multiply(self):
    return self.field_one * self.field_two

self.field_three = self.multiply()

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Never Use store=True For Computed Fields

Never declare a computed field with parameter store=True.

money_count = fields.Float(compute=compute_money_count, store=True)

@api.depends('money_count')
def compute_money_count(self):
  self.money_count = self.another_field_1 * self.another_field_2

That’s because it will lead to a consistency issue. money_count above is supposed to keep calculation when certain condition are met. If the @api.depends() decorator are triggered, the first calculation will be saved into the database. However, the second or third may not (at it will still use the first calculation result) and it’s really dangerous. Make sure to never store any calculated field into database.

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